McConnell Leads Disgruntled Right-Wingers In Complaining About New Judge-Shopping Fix

[In It to Win It]

McConnell Leads Disgruntled Right-Wingers In Complaining About New Judge-Shopping Fix

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), joined by a conservative law professor and judges, complained Thursday about the Judicial Conference’s announcement of a new policy to crack down on the judge-shopping that has been so beneficial to right-wing litigants.

The Judicial Conference, the policymaking body for federal courts, revealed Tuesday that it would unroll a new policy to randomize the assignment of cases seeking nationwide injunctions on federal or state action. This would stymy litigants from repeatedly filing in divisions with only one judge (see: Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo) to significantly up the odds of a friendly ruling with the power to at least temporarily block a federal government policy for the entire country. Right-wing litigants (including the state of Texas) have frequently returned to a handful of Trump judges in divisions where they get most or all of the cases to combat Biden administration actions.

While the announcement didn’t link to policy text and was scant on enforcement details, experts expressed enthusiasm to TPM that the Judicial Conference felt compelled to act on the blatant court manipulation, mixed with reservations about how binding the new policy will be.

While judge shopping has given right-wing litigants a string of high-profile wins — the mifepristone case to be argued before the Supreme Court this month, coming up from Kacsmaryk’s courtroom, is a prominent example — it’s also profoundly reshaped the legal landscape. It helps conservative litigants fast-track cases, even those on wobbly legal footing, to the appellate courts and, sometimes, to the Supreme Court. It reshapes the dockets for those higher courts, permeating them with the causes célèbres of the right. And it advances in leaps and bounds long-held pet projects of the conservative legal world, including the war on the administrative state.

Given those enormous benefits to them, many on the right are not taking the news well.

[GreenWave]

1. Well turtle, fair play may yet prevail in your lifetime.

[UpInArms]

2. If Moscow Mitch is complaining

I am very happy

[Ligyron]

3. Not being familiar with the powers of the Judicial Conference, I hope this policy prevails.

The RW GQP and it's predecessor, the GOP ... have made ruling by minority a fine art, one that has faced far too little resistance from our side until, in many cases it was too late.

We counted too much the decency, decorum and sense of fair play that by and large had been the norm in public affairs and they took advantage of that and ran roughshod right over us.

There are many examples occurring beforehand but let's just take the case of ol' Mitch himself in refusing to seat Garland on some newly cocockted principal and then turning right around and violating it in seating their own partisan clown all while we did absolutely nothing about it.

They cheat, lie, steal and seek power at every opportunity and care less about how it "looks" as do their voters. They have a well oiled and well funded propaganda machine that knows just how to push their sucker's buttons and can get them to believe almost anything now.

I hope decency and fairness prevail but on the other hand I'm glad I'm old too.